STMicroelectronics and ARM Drive Technology Innovation and Talent Development in China

BEIJING, Jan. 19, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, and ARM (LSE: ARM; NASDAQ: ARMH.US), the leading provider of semiconductor intellectual property (IP), announced the winners of the ARM - ST University Design Contest 2015 in China.

The contest, in its third year, encourages university students in China to design innovative smart applications using STM32 Nucleo boards as hardware platform and the GCC open-source compiler or the MDK-ARM software development environment.

From its March 2015 launch to its close in November 2015, the 3^rd edition of the ARM - ST University Design Contest has attracted more than 800 teams of 2,000 students and teachers from 203 universities across 31 provinces in China. The contest offered three rounds of evaluation - from preliminary to semi-final and final.

"The response was overwhelming, with more than a 10% increase in participation from the previous years, and the quality of submitted designs was very high, and applications ranged from drones, to robots, smart vehicles, and infotainment," said Arnaud Julienne, Senior Director, Microcontroller, Memory & Secure MCU Group, Greater China & South Asia, STMicroelectronics. "Encouraging the innovativeness and capability among these young talents to integrate and apply the latest embedded technologies drives technology innovation and talent enhancement in the region and helps students to successfully integrate smart devices into both innovative and entirely new applications."

The contest entries covered a wide range of applications using sensors, motion control, wireless connectivity, mobile, and other products. Twenty-one teams were shortlisted for the two-day final round with finalists who demonstrated their works and answered questions from a panel of judges. These judges comprised executives of ST and ARM, as well as scholars and experts from China Software Industry Embedded Association and top Chinese universities including Peking University, Beijing University of Technology, Zhejiang University, and East China Normal University.

The overall champion team of this year's ARM - ST University Design Contest is Lab440 (V1.1), from East China Normal University, who designed a smart text reader based on image-processing techniques. The reader helps senior citizens read instructions printed on medicine containers where the text font size is often quite small. The application uses Contact Image Sensors to read the text and convert it to speech through TTS (text-to-speech).

A joint first prize was awarded to Dream Team from Suihua University and Conquer Team from Jinan University, who submitted STM32-based Telepresence Robot using Virtual Reality and a Pulse-Control Simulator, respectively.

"China is set to become a leader in the smart-device industry and IoT deployment, so supporting the development of the Chinese engineering community is vitally important," said Khaled Benkrid, Worldwide University Program Manager, ARM. "The ARM - ST University Design Contest gives Chinese university students access to the latest ARM-based ST technologies with teaching and training materials provided by the ARM University Program. This will make students work-ready as they are equipped with industry-standard skills and tools."

About STMicroelectronics

ST is a global leader in the semiconductor market serving customers across the spectrum of sense and power and automotive products and embedded processing solutions. From energy management and savings to trust and data security, from healthcare and wellness to smart consumer devices, in the home, car and office, at work and at play, ST is found everywhere microelectronics make a positive and innovative contribution to people's life. By getting more from technology to get more from life, ST stands for life.augmented.

In 2014, the Company's net revenues were $7.40 billion. Further information on ST can be found at www.st.com.

About ARM
ARM is at the heart of the world's most advanced digital products. Our technology enables the development of new markets and transformation of industries and society, invisibly creating opportunity for a globally connected population. We design scalable, energy-efficient processors and related technologies to deliver intelligence wherever computing happens, ranging from sensors to servers, including smartphones, tablets, digital TVs, enterprise infrastructure and the Internet of Things.

Our innovative technology is licensed by ARM Partners who have shipped more than 75 billion System on Chip (SoCs) containing our intellectual property. Together with our Connected Community, we are breaking down barriers to innovation for developers, designers and engineers, ensuring a fast, reliable route to market for leading electronics companies. Learn more and join the conversation at http://community.arm.com.

For Press Information Contact:

STMicroelectronics
Grace Deng
Sr. Corporate External Communications Executive
+86 10 5797 9928
[email protected]

Jennifer Cheng
Corporate External Communications Manager - Greater China 
+886 (2) 6603 - 2505
[email protected]

ARM
Terry Li
PR Manager
+86 10 8217 2028
[email protected]

Irene Yu
Director, Digital Marketing & APAC Corporate Marketing
+886-2-8752-1711
[email protected]

ARM - ST University Design Contest 2015 http://hugin.info/152740/R/1979809/725247.pdf

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